Nikki Haley, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Monday the crisis at the U.S. southern border with Mexico proves there has been "dereliction of duty" under President Joe Biden.
During a five-stop trip along the southern border in Texas with Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, the Daily Mail reported Haley also said it's up to Biden to fire Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and replace him with someone more competent.
"What I saw today was a dereliction of duty," Haley said at a news conference during her final stop in Eagle Pass, Texas. "A president has one job, one job, and that's to keep America safe. There is nothing that is keeping Americans safe than what we saw today. This is a crisis. It's not just a crisis for the people of Texas, it is a crisis for every American family.
"You look at what Joe Biden has allowed to have happen. He thinks if he doesn't have to talk about the border crisis, it doesn't exist. He thinks if he tells Mayorkas not to call it a crisis, it won't happen."
In the 2022 fiscal year, there were 2.3 million encounters with illegal immigrants along the southern border, according to Customs and Border Patrol data. The numbers for the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October, are on track to outpace the 2022 numbers, especially when Title 42, which allows for the rapid removal of migrants at the border because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ends May 11.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, met with Border Patrol agents, National Guard personnel, ranchers, and residents.
"Biden needs to open his mouth and say this is a crisis," she said. "He needs to let his cabinet agencies say this is a crisis, and they need to start dealing with it. And Congress needs to get in a room and fix it."
Haley detailed what she would do to fix the border crisis. She said she would institute an e-verify program where no business could hire an illegal immigrant; she would hire at least 25,000 Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; reinstate the remain in Mexico policy; keep Title 42 in place; and defund sanctuary cities.
"The one thing that could make the biggest difference: Stop catch-and-release and go to catch-and-deport," Haley said. "When you start deporting illegal immigrants, they will stop coming. Right now on social media, they're telling their other cartels where to bring people through, what passages to take, how to get there, what to say when they get there.
"Why are we doing this? Stop the insanity because we are doing this to ourselves."
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